Have you got your variable names right??

my %pal=();

while ( my $line = <DATA> ) {
  chomp($line);
  my($palkey, $data) = split (",", $line);
  $pal{$palkey} = $data;
}

while (my($key, $value) = each %pal) {
     print "$key=>$value\n";
}
__DATA__
297220,ITEM
207420,NEW
222222,OLD
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